


One Parisian Night (in One Thousand)

by Rana Eros (ranalore)



Category: Moulin Rouge! (2001)
Genre: Arabic Character, F/M, chromatic yuletide 2010 challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:44:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ranalore/pseuds/Rana%20Eros
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arabia has a story to tell a paying audience.  It resembles her life about as closely as Scheherazade's tales in the French translation of <em>The Book of a Thousand Nights and One Night</em> resemble the stories her neighbors and relatives told her when she was a child in Beirut.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Parisian Night (in One Thousand)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arem/gifts).



> This is the Arabia story I was hoping to write. I fear the structure reveals the vastness of my ignorance, and I sincerely apologize in advance for the fail I know I committed, even if I don't currently know its nature. I'm still doing research so I'm better prepared next year.

"Zidler claims you're the daughter of a sultan," Arabia's latest patron informs her with the air of someone imparting a great and unexpected secret. Given that Zidler charges for the fantasy, and thus of course would ensure that his most expensive dancers each know the fairy tale he's created for them, she waits to see if this man will be one of those who claim some kind of authority on the matter, and what kind of proof he'll demand she offer. Or he could be one of those who denies belief altogether. He proves himself such a one when he says, "Naturally, I don't believe him. How would the daughter of a sultan end up selling herself in a Parisian bordello?"

The ones who deny belief don't actually disbelieve; they want a different kind of proof than those who think they know how to tell what she is. They want elaboration on the claims Zidler makes. One of them told her of a series of books, a Dr Mardrus' translation of a thing he called _The Book of a Thousand Nights and One Night_. He spoke eagerly of the heroine, Scheherazade, and how she would tell stories to the Sultan Shahryar while seeing to his carnal needs. It was clear he wanted her to play the part of Scheherazade for him, and now she thinks many of the ones who claim disbelief are aficianadoes of Dr Mardrus. She knows the names he is using in his books, and the general shape of a few of the tales she's coaxed from some of these patrons, but the details are as close to the stories she heard from neighbors and relatives growing up as Zidler's histoire d'Arabia is to her own life.

But then, she wouldn't want any of these men to know her life, and that's not what they pay for. So in response to the skeptical questions, the leading dare, she gives them the heavy-lidded stare Marie taught her to practice in the mirror--"the Oriental mystique'll have them eating out of your hand," Marie had said with her usual contempt for their patrons--and launches into an elaborate and fantastical lie peppered with phrases she's learned Parisians believe to be "authentically Arabian," all delivered in an accent not quite what her own was before she left Beirut and herself behind. She claims Damascus as Arabia's home, and if she's not certain if Damascus has a sultan, she knows her listeners are even less aware. She gives Arabia a dazzling mother, the Sultan's most favored concubine, a beautiful woman blessed with every grace and skilled in the arts of love. Of course such a woman would have enemies, as would her beautiful daughter, and once Arabia's mother was of an age where the Sultan's eye passed over her, those enemies managed to send mother and daughter both fleeing from the Sultan's harem.

After that, it is all harrowing journeys across the harsh desert, narrow escapes from brigands and thieves, desperate negotiations for passage aboard a French ship when they reach the Mediterranean, and then, at last, Arabia's mother succumbing to heartbreak and exhaustion, and dying within sight of France. Arabia, bereft, spent her first months in the country in a kind of daze, numbly allowing herself to be ravished by sailors and using the coins tossed on her table to buy food. Then Zidler found her, knew her immediately for the prize she was, and brought her to the Moulin Rouge, there to at least command a price and entertain a clientele befitting her beauty and lineage.

It's really quite sordid and insulting, but she's used to that anymore, and the patrons drink in every word, even if they pretend they still don't believe any of it. This latest one says, when she has finished the whole recital, "That all sounds rather far-fetched to me, and why didn't you try to return home when your mother died?"

Arabia carefully allows her eyes to grow a little wet, her voice a little husky. This one is hooked, for all his face-saving scoffing. He may even pay extra if he feels sorry enough for her, a woman of royal blood fallen so low. "I could not afford it at first, but even if I could, I would not be welcomed back after what I have been forced to do. It's better to remain here, no matter how much I miss my family and my father's palace." His eyes have softened at her words, and she had been prepared to spend the night playing his Oriental temptress, but she can work with this turn in the mood as well. She affects a swoon onto the pile of silken pillows that will serve as the sight of the consummation of their business deal for the night. Making sure she's sprawled in a way that looks both helpless and enticing, she holds out an entreating hand to him and says, "Won't you help me forget them for the night, monsieur? Remind me I am in Paris, where I can be treated like the princess I was before they drove me away."

"Of course, my dear, of course," he murmurs, coming to her and catching her up in a mockery of a tender embrace. She allows him to exert himself in attempting to please her, and pretends that he succeeds spectacularly. In truth, he's not the worst she's had, but no patron has yet matched either her self-ministrations or the efforts of her bohemian lovers. Apparently, when a man pays for sex, he usually doesn't consider the whore's enjoyment to be a pressing concern. Arabia doesn't mind, mostly because it wouldn't matter if she did, just as it doesn't matter that her father was, in fact, a glassworker turned rebel who was killed by a sultan's orders. Zidler's fabrication is an ignorant cruelty, but she's used to ignorance, and while it's not true that what they don't know, they can't use to hurt her, it's true that she prefers ignorant cruelty to the other kind.

When that preference changes, perhaps she will return home, where she is not Arabia, and see how her mother's live and knowing cruelty compares.


End file.
